DiabloFans

Thank you, Bandyto, for writing out what I wanted to write out later today when I have the time. +1, you said everything I wanted to say regarding Leon's points.

I'll still give you a +1, Leon, because I can see you are really trying hard and this is a step forward from your previous 40 posts. However, from all your 41 posts I really get the impression that Diablo 3 is just not the right game for you. Usually I tell people that they should at least wait until RoS to see if they like it, but from your posts it really seems like PoE offers exactly everything you want and what D3 might never offer. I believe there are even dragons in PoE. I'm not sure if they have bobby eyes. What are bobby eyes, anyways? The picture in my mind is this (which I'd rather pet than kill):

Quote from Dentacom

Their philosophies for Diablo 3 do not match the philosophy of what a good Diablo item-system is supposed to be. [...] They fail to understand what it is that players want out of their game.

[...] There are several other reasons why Diablo 2 is still a superior product to Diablo 3, but I’m going to focus on just a few.

You finish your post with a disclaimer that this is your opinion, but here you state your opinion as a fact. Their philosophy does not match your philosophy. You think there are reasons why D2 is superior to D3.

In my opinion, D3's philosophy (and in particular RoS's philosophy) takes the franchise back to its core and where it all started, as RoS is much closer to D1 than to D2. And in my opinion, this is the right step in times when all Diablo clones just focus on aspects of Diablo 2 that were not elementary to the genre as such. In my opinion, D3's philosophy has the foundation to create a Diablo experience better than ever before and it's already miles ahead of Diablo 2.

Then you go on and make statements that are, in my opinion, just not true:

• SC2 did not fail, I have no idea why you think it did. I bought SC2 and never played it because it didn't appeal to me, so since I didn't like it I would be the first to admit if it would have failed - but SC2 has almost become a synonym for the strategy genre these days. There is no other game that is even close to it for those who are interested in RTS and can deal with the micro management requirements (I can't). SC2 is the top-selling RTS game after it's predecessor, SC2 is only surpassed by C&C1 in its critical acclaim, and is the top RTS in all e-sports events currently.
PvP never was a central aspect of D2. I'm sorry for all the PvPers that they don't get their stuff in D3 yet and also probably not in RoS anytime soon, but PvE is just way more important. Many players never touched PvP in D2 and still played for 10+ years! You're implying that PvE is finished at some point and then PvP comes after that - just nope. If you think it's like that, you have a very skewed perception of Diablo that does not apply to anyone I know (before I came to this board I didn't even know remotely anyone who ever played D2PvP).

Could you elaborate why you think that loot 2.0 is clumsy, unthoughtful, and downright bad? I beg to differ - I think it's a step towards the right direction; it's the process of many iterations of suggestions proposed by the community. The separation of primary and secondary stats is great, the focus on main stats is up for debate (we discussed this just last week extensively) but it works if you look at it from an ARPG perspective, the versatility of potential affixes is better than in D1, D2, or D3V, finally allowing for a choice in RoS. In addition to that, the legendaries really change how you look at your character. There is quite a bit of stuff that needs to be tweaked in all of these aspects, but the general direction looks promising to me.

If loot 2.0 goes live in its current form in RoS, D3 will die even quicker than it did in vanilla.

D3 vanilla did not die. 10% of the buyers were active daily and 30% active at least once a month one year after release - there aren't many non-MMORPG games with numbers like that! It has decreased recently, but that's obvious because the expansion is near, this even happens to MMORPGs.

1) When players have good loot (in say, a month), they will stop getting upgrades so quickly, and the EXACT SAME problem that is happening now will happen, except this time it would be worse because you can’t even sell the decent stuff you find.

But the point of BoA is that you get upgrades less quickly. If legendaries weren't BoA, all the game-breaking legendaries would be shared and distributed. Depending on how good trading works, this means that drop rates had to be adjusted. Better distribution of loot (i.e., simplified trading) leads to faster progress across the community, leads to lower drop rates. This vicious cycle went completely crazy with the AH, were almost not a single remotely useful legendary was taken out of the game, so the drop rates had to be incredibly low.

2) There is nothing worse than having to vendor amazing gear just because you have a better piece. Nothing will push players away from thegame quicker than this.

If an item is useless to you, then it's probably not amazing either. Plus, who talks about vendoring? Salvaging. I really really really have troubles getting enough legendaries in the beta right now to reforge my legendaries. I don't know why good loot that I can't use would make me quit the game. I've played RPGs, ARPGs, MMORPGs, and adventures for more than 20 years now, I've found millions of nice items that I couldn't use personally, and never ever did that make me quit the game. Even when trading was available, I didn't trade it but just vendored it. Totally don't care. Yay, I found a rare item! I got the feeling of achievement - and that's what keeps me playing.

3) It kills trading. While many people will say “Trading wasn’t that great, I barely did it”, it is a huge part of Diablo and passively makes the item-hunt feel better, because you can exchange things for things you want.

We've had this discussion a million times, literally. The majority of players did not trade items in any of the Diablo series before the AH was introduced. All these people hunted for items and never even thought about trading. I hunt items for my characters, my twinks, my followers. If I trade something, I trade it with my friends - who I'm playing with, so most of the time I can give them the items in the 2 hour window. I do not hunt items for D2JSP.

4) No one disputes that the AH was bad and did more harm than good. But making everything BoA is far too extreme and harms the game.

Yes! On this point we totally agree. They took BoA too far here. I also didn't think they would've done this. Making everything BoA is far too extreme - if it will harm the game, we have to evaluate in the long run. In my personal opinion, if they lift the rules from "2 hours within party" to something like "12 hours within clan", I don't have any issues with that anymore. In an RPG, I want items that have a bit of backstory. I don't just go to the next town and ask an old lady to sell me a shrubbery.

5) It voids the entire Diablo 3 economy, making it non-existent

Oh yes, again on this point we agree! However, the takeaway is different. You seem to not like this - I think it's great. An RPG is not a stock market simulation game. It's about killing monsters and acquiring loot, not about playing the economy and getting rich. If they really kill the economy, I'd be more than happy.

And lastly, the Mystic. The mystic has made the item-system unrecognizable as a Diablo game. While it is arguably a fun system, it takes away from the idea of having good loot be good because it is GOOD.

I absolutely love the Mystic and I think it's an awesome addition. I also don't understand what your last sentence means. Keep in mind that there are restrictions on reforging, so it's not like you can take a crap item and turn it into a BiS. Without the Mystic, BoA and smart loot would be terrible - but the Mystic, BoA, and smart loot in combination make sense.

You must be really lucky if in 30 hours of the beta you already geared up your character that you got bored. I played many more hours than that and I'm still stuck on Torment 1. The only things that keeps me from playing more are bugs that make my desired build(s) impossible. So just waiting for the PTR patch.

Edit: Trying to fix the stupid layout with insane spacings. Working on it.

Quote from Ruluku

1) There was free trade in Diablo 2 and its a fairly widely held belief that only a fraction of the player base used 3rd party sites like d2jsp. That's hardly "ruling" the economy. I'd like people to weigh in on whether they used jsp or not to really see if this is a valid belief.

Only a fraction of the player base actually did trade, actually. Most players never traded, at least not publicly, i.e., outside of their circle of friends.

Of those who traded, I think it's safe to say the majority used D2JSP or similar third party sites to coordinate their trades. But to be honest, this is kinda leading nowhere: no one gives a damn about these third party sites. Whether you trade through using your clan chat, the D2JSP forum, or Ebay - what do I care?

The one argument why trading was completely "killed" in RoS is because of the effect that the AH had on loot. Since items were traded among all players, progression was way quicker than expected and loot had to be adjusted, i.e., drop rates had to be lowered significantly. The more people trade, the lower the drop rates. It's as simple as that (here's the official word on that).

So saying "if you don't want to trade, just don't trade, but let me have my open trading" is not really how it works.

Note: I myself am 100% sure that the day will come where I will curse Blizzard for the fact that everything is BoA. But I've arranged myself with the situation. I just don't like when people go all nuts and forget the real reasons behind these design decisions. There's no question about it - it's an overreaction and they could at least allow trading in clans, for example only for clan members after a week or a month or so. Maybe they'll introduce it later on, we'll see...

But the way how some people argue for trading in this thread makes me sick. Well, there's not even an argument, just "trade or riot".